


the sun rising

by klickitats



Series: the sun rising [1]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, Femslash February, Military Jackets, Significant Hand Touching, Tokens
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-09
Updated: 2016-02-09
Packaged: 2018-05-19 07:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5958436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klickitats/pseuds/klickitats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Vivienne and Adaar reveal more than either intended after descending into an argument over one of the Inquisition's charges. Handkerchiefs make an appearance.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sun rising

**Author's Note:**

> A moment on a cold morning between Adaar and Vivienne. This Adaar attended the Conclave as a captain from the Orlesian army, instead of as a hired mercenary from the Valo-Kas. Picturing her in a military-inspired outfit is strongly encouraged—nay, required. Title from Donne's poem of the same name.

Despite the thick layer of snow on the ground, Adaar rises earlier than even the kitchen servants. By the time she finishes her exercises, the cook will fling the door open, sweating from the temples, and the smell of loaves will grace the morning. The habit of twenty-odd years yields at least this small, solitary pleasure.

She and Sera used to practice together, but they’re better at swilling ale instead, and Sera hates the way she practices. “Nothing in it for you,” she says, nose wrinkling. “Like watching someone button up a coat over and over.” Followed by a thick wad of spit spat into the snow. Well. The morning hour’s rough, besides.

The target’s set, her bow’s braced, and she lets each arrow loose in perfect rhythm. It requires the pristine concentration of very small embroidery stitches, or the perfect cut of a surgeon’s scalpel. They lodge themselves in the target in a heartbreakingly even row. Her fingers sing. She takes a breath, reaches for the next arrow in her quiver.

“Inquisitor,” says a low, smooth voice from the stairs. Vivienne has waited for a pause in the set. Adaar turns her head and she descends, wrapped in a velvet coat the color of emeralds. The hem brushes each snowy stair. White fur adorns the sleeves and collar, from a brace of snow foxes she hunted up in the mountains one afternoon with Blackwall. Now Vivienne wears them as mantle. It turns the back of her neck hot as a brand.

It shouldn’t. It’s hardly the first token she’s handed a woman.  

She swallows, turns, and fires another round into the target, this time hitting each space left between the first row of arrows.

“Your form remains impeccable,” Vivenne says mildly, making a nearby stump into a throne. “But where are your gloves?”

“Cold’s good for the fingers.” She adjusts her rhythm, firing another arrow in the space of each pause. “Might not always have gloves.” Thrum, thrum, thrum. “Can’t prepare for perfection.” The last arrow whistles into place, marking a perfect cross in the target’s center.

Vivienne makes a soft noise of agreement underneath her breath, eyes on Adaar’s work. She lowers her bow. “But I doubt you came out here to watch me practice.”

“It’s not often you bring out a bow the size of a sylvan.”

Adaar, who’s made every bow she’s ever shot, is suddenly caught by the idea of one carved from one of the rare, sentient trees roaming Ferelden’s forests. Would it speak to her hands? Would it refuse to fire? The sheer possibilities make her fall silence in wonder until Vivienne’s laughter makes snow-soft curls in the air between them.

“Like a child on her name day,” Vivienne remarks, and the corner of Adaar’s mouth twitches up. She fires another set of arrows, making half a star. And waits. She’s a tactician by trade, and learned back at Haven Vivienne prefers to make the first move.

It suits her fine. Adaar likes a skirmish.

Vivienne adjusts the sleeve of her coat. “Cole,” she says, finally.

Adaar does not sigh, but pauses to examine the fletching on the next arrow. “No.”

“I understand sympathy, Inquisitor, and that Varric can weave a compelling tale of potential.” She folds her hands in her lap. “But a demon is a demon.”

“In another age, I might have stood with you, Madame,” Adaar tells her, eyes only flicking up once from her examination of the arrow. “But we live in a new world now.”

“Not quite yet.” Vivienne’s small smile doesn’t reach her eyes. “We still teeter on the edge of the knife.”

“How does a new world begin, if not on the edge of a blade?” The arrow suffices. The next does not—it needs a new tip. She drops it haphazardly beside her into the snow.

“My dear,” Vivienne says, and Adaar’s lips twitch again. Ah, the pointed fencing tip of _my dear._ “Your optimism refreshes, as always, but I know you possess more sense.”  

“I only reject that there are two _modus operandi_ ,” she replies. “More than _demon_ and _not-demon._ ”

“How reductive.” Vivienne’s voice is quieter now, but more solid. It makes her pause, look up from her quiver. This is Vivienne’s honesty. No coldness. Her voice never rises above its even, pleasant tone—and it never, ever wavers. People forget this, underestimate it. But iron is still iron. “Do you think I see the world so simply, as though I could hold half in one hand, and half in the other?”

“I do not,” answers Adaar, unfaltering.

“Solas is an apostate.” Vivienne’s voice measures out the appropriate amount of disapproval, spaces it as evenly as Adaar’s arrows. “Varric is a novelist. They love the strange. Neither understand the reality of making a home with what lies beyond the Veil.”

Adaar clears her throat. “He saved us, Madame.”

She waves her hand. “Bought us a few minutes, perhaps.”

But this will not stand. “Each second counted at Haven,” Adaar says, hand gripping her bow. “We started losing lives the second the Red Templars landed. Do not underestimate the victory.”

It brings back the memories of an older fight, an argument they tussled between them just after landing at Skyhold. Adaar admits her own stubbornness, but even the smallest gains must be counted in loss. Vivienne disagreed. Adaar eventually snapped, tired of the game and out of patience with herself and the conversation— _I will tear him to pieces when he returns for us_ , she snarled. _I will take each pound of his rotting flesh as payment. I will deliver each inch to those who survived. Even you, Vivienne. You are owed._

And the—the way Vivienne had looked at her then, as the sun set, and Adaar realized they were just standing on the battlements, where anyone could hear, where anyone could see. She expected disapproval. After all, Adaar knows better. But Vivienne glowed, her eyes alight with pride. _Good. Anger will keep you breathing._

Adaar has captured forts, fought off sieges, rooted out the most well-hidden of threats in the bowels of Orlais, but no one has ever looked at her like that before. Like a mountain must feel when the sun still hides behind it, when all its rays warm it from stone to peak, before the rest of the world gets the honor.

It made her burn.

“Very well.” Vivienne does not concede, but pushes them in another direction. “So you weigh his worth from Haven.”

“I suppose so.” The arrows sit forgotten in the quiver. “I bestow him a chance.”

“Ah, but chances are fickle things, my dear.” She rests her head upon a hand.

“I don’t avoid them,” says Adaar. “Risk is part of it.” _It_ meaning… everything. “Does that make you nervous?”

“I trust your leadership, Inquisitor.” Adaar can hear it—the equivalent of Vivienne rolling her eyes. It’s well deserved; the question was a paltry test at best.

“Then know I would hardly be here if not for chance.”

“It’s not the same.” Vivienne waves a hand.

Adaar raises an eyebrow. “Hardly,” she says. “Tal-Vashoth are thought as gleeful blades from coast to coast. No better than demons, if only more—earthly.” Which, Adaar maintains, made herself all the more uneasy to receive. She does not voice it—it is not the time—but she knows perfectly by now, end of the world not withstanding, she should be a chevalier. _Ser_ Adaar. She’s an Inquisitor now, a title she finds suitable. Yet at the Conclave, she stood as Captain, and nothing more.

“But were you all silver at sixteen as well?” Vivienne asks, and despite the seriousness of the conversation, Adaar laughs, low and raspy. Her hair has always been grey—a streak of black, here and there, running from root to tip, but that is all. In spirit, the caps of Adaar’s long horns, swooping up towards the sky, are wrought from silver, enchanted for strength and shine. (A little rebellion, as Orlais loves its gold.)

“You are right,” she says. “Perhaps they mistook me for someone’s grandmother.”

A little smile from Vivienne, now, and Adaar represses the sigh building in her chest.

“Still,” Vivienne continues, “I would have you spend your heart on other chances. This has too much space for failure.”

“It’s not out of sentiment,” Adaar replies, with a prickle of annoyance. She tests the limbs of her bow, pulls her quiver onto her back again. “I owe him a chance. I do not repay grace with—”

She pauses, seeking a word. Vivienne waits.

“Exile,” Adaar says, finally. “Abandonment.”

“No.” Vivienne is stalwart. “You repay grace with thanks. Not risk.”

“Madame.” Adaar fingers the bridge of her nose. “I will not go back on my word either way.”

“Do you think I wish to make a liar out of you?” Vivienne asks, hands folded again. “I only advise what I know to be true.”

“Enlighten me,” she sighs, and it’s a little rude, but she wishes the argument over.

“Are you prepared to face the consequences?” she asks.

“Of course I am.” She nocks an arrow.

“You are prepared to put him under the blade, should he prove a danger.”

Adaar fires. The arrow buries itself soundly to begin the last line of the star. “Indeed, Madame.”

“You are prepared to face your followers as you do so.” Vivienne’s voice clipped and brisk, does nto sound so certain. “You are prepared to defend your choices to Varric, to Solas.”

“As I do to you now,” Adaar responds. “I am perfectly capable of explaining my rationale.” Three more arrows now, quick as stitches.

“Quite.” Vivienne watches the arrows fly. “And you are prepared to wager their trust for him?”

It makes her pause, the arrow faltering as she nocks it.

“Their trust,” Vivienne repeats. “You mistake them. They did not entrust you to be wise. They entrusted you to let him live. An irreconcilable difference.”

Adaar straightens the arrow and fires it, and then another. “How reductive,” she says.

“Occasionally the truth is simple.” Vivienne tilts her head. “Yet they have set a very complicated expectation for you to meet.”

The pattern is nearly complete, and then Adaar can declare the argument finished. Another arrow finds a home in the target across the courtyard. “I will be ready,” she mutters, “for whatever comes.”

“When it happened on my watch,” Vivienne says, “I was not.”

Adaar doesn’t know why the statement throws her so. Perhaps because in the history of their talks, a careful balance and counterbalance of measurement and weight, Vivienne does not—disclose. She does not confide. The reveal is slow, the building of a mosaic through a thousand pieces of broken porcelain. Each piece placed perfectly, and in just time.

But Adaar stutters, the draw unclean, and even as the arrow flies, the bowstring snaps against the exposed flesh of her wrist. No gloves, yes, to prepare for imperfection. How fitting.

The pain is sudden, biting, sharp as a razor’s edge. She does not swear, or drop her bow, or clutch at her skin. She merely inhales, one pointed drag, and closes her eyes for a moment.

Vivienne is there, suddenly, her gloved hands reaching for her. “Let me see,” she commands, quiet and firm.

Adaar relinquishes her wrist—a thick welt already grows, a trickle of blood from the sheer force of the snap. Adaar has done worse to herself, scraped all the skin clean off the insides of both her arms more than once, broken fingers, blistered skin.

“May I?” Vivienne asks, sliding a hand into her pocket. Adaar nods, and she produces a little green vial. The tincture smells of clean elfroot. It takes her a moment to realize how carefully Vivienne holds her hand. A mystery. Adaar’s hands are broad and strong, covered in calluses and scars, nicked by blade and folly. Adaar has never treated them gently—rough hands meant for rough tasks. But Vivienne cradles it steadily in hers as she applies drops of green to her wrist.

The drops fizzle on her skin, inspire the flesh to heal itself.

“One of my first apprentices did not pass her Harrowing,” she says. Neither of them look at each other. They can’t. “She awoke, shuddered, and gave herself over to Desire. She was gone. And then duty was carried out.” The droplets make cold stitches on Adaar’s flesh; she latches on to the precise strength of Vivienne’s voice.

She can imagine it, understand pieces. Adaar has watched more people than she will ever know cut down in the heat of battle, and she has seen three of her comrades hung for desertion at the gallows, their boots knocking against each other in the wind.

It is not the same. But.

“I prepared her perfectly.” Vivienne administers another drop to finish the process. “It was not enough. For some, the Harrowing is no better than roulette.”

Adaar watches her slide her hand into her pocket again, the pain of her wrist long since forgotten. She withdraws a scarf—the soft, cream-colored lace she wears frequently, trimmed in Orlesian gold. Delicate and thin.  

Vivienne winds the scarf around her wrist.

“It never became easier,” she says, and Adaar cannot find her tongue, not for the life of her. There are a thousand things she wants to speak, but none of them seem right, and truly—all she wants, _all_ she wants, is for Vivienne to speak, and speak more. “The second time it happened, or the third. Years passed between some of them. Years of experience. Years of practice, of guidance. No matter. You do not become accustomed to the risk.”

Adaar opens her mouth, but Vivienne ties the knot, and she falls silent.

“I cannot spare you, Inquisitor, from yourself.” She does not let go of Adaar’s wrist, but tilts her head to finally meet her gaze. The look in her eyes rips at Adaar’s heart.

Just for a moment, just for a breath, it is open. Vivienne’s spirit, that chivalrous iron, wry and sharper than any whip, never disappears. But there is pain there, uncertain and untouchable.

She blinks, casts her eyes back to Adaar’s wrist. “But I would spare you from this folly, if I can.”

Vivienne releases her, replaces the little bottle back in her pocket. “I bid you good morning,” she says, smoothing her coat, and turning. Adaar watches her climb back up the stone stairs until she disappears back into Skyhold’s great hall.

“Good morning,” Adaar echoes, no louder than a whisper. But Vivienne is gone. She still holds out her wrist, stiff, as though a practiced hand still ties a knot. Her eyes fall on the practice target across the courtyard. Her wayward arrow, far from its mark, splits her first shot down the middle. 


End file.
